


I Walk With Your Shadow

by formalizing



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Supernatural
Genre: Codependent Winchesters, Daemon Touching, Established Relationship, M/M, Sam Winchester's Wall, Season/Series 06, Sibling Incest, Soulless Sam Winchester
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-10
Updated: 2014-02-10
Packaged: 2018-05-08 07:42:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5489150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/formalizing/pseuds/formalizing
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam comes back without a soul, which means he comes back without a daemon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Walk With Your Shadow

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rei_c](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rei_c/gifts).



> Exists solely because Rei wanted and willed it into being.

Sam comes back without a soul, which means he comes back without a daemon.

Asenath won’t go near him. She isn’t openly hostile, but she rides in the backseat of the car, keeps herself to whichever side of Dean is furthest from Sam; anything to keep her distance from him. And when Dean finally gives in to the aching loneliness, lets the shell that used to be his brother press him down into a motel bed, she stretches the pull as far away as they can both physically manage and doesn’t come back until morning.

“He’s cold,” she whispers to him. “Wrong.”

Dean sees Sam looking at Asenath with vague curiosity once in a while, like he really has no idea why she’s necessary, and it takes every ounce of Dean’s strength not to drive his fist into Sam’s face.

Asenath grew up just as tangled up in Sam’s daemon, Bridget, as Dean was in Sam; if they were within touching distance, their daemons would be wrapped around one another. People thought it was adorable when they were young—tiny daemons and equally tiny hands curled together. The looks started getting a bit more curious and a lot less comfortable as they edged into their teens and adulthood. Bridget and Asenath wouldn’t be separated, though. Even when dad’s daemon, Zula, got between them, her wolf body taller than either of them and demanding obedience with a swift, sure glance, they wouldn’t be kept apart long.

When Dean was in his early twenties, Asenath finally settled—a cross somewhere between Zula’s powerful frame and a Husky’s softer, fleshier form, sporting a wide, smiling mouth full of teeth. Sam touched her deliberately, then, rather than with the chubby hands of a toddler who doesn’t understand what he’s grabbing at. He stroked the tips of his fingers along Asenath’s jaw with confidence, like he had every right, like she was his own. Dean’s whole body flushed at the sensation, every emotion he had for Sam crashing up to the surface of his skin in a guilty wave of love, lust, and protectiveness.

Then Bridget butted her head up into his palm and he couldn’t stop himself from dragging his fingers reverently down the ridges of her spine, copper fur silky to the touch. He could feel a heady thrum of _safe, want, need_ , and it blended and softened the edges of his own, an endless feedback loop.

When Sam says “please” with swollen lips now, it’s a bad imitation of the real thing, of a night in one of a hundred temporary homes, in a bed that was never really theirs, stuck together as close as possible. Each word now is carefully designed to twist Dean up all wrong, and it works every time.

Bridget never settled, not completely. She had been constantly shifting as they grew up, sometimes three or four times before breakfast. It slowed in their teens, when she would change maybe once a month. She preferred feline forms, slipping easily from jungle predator to house cat as she pleased. Sometimes she’d try out a canine, just to fit in; the three of them, one big hunting pack.

The last form Dean saw her in before Sam left for Stanford was something with wings.

In the years after Jess, Bridget still hadn’t settled. For the longest time she was a mourning dove, fluttering out of reach of Asenath’s huge paws. Eventually, though, she morphed back into something four-legged and furry, angled cat’s eyes finally looking clear of grief as she tentatively crept back to Dean’s palm.

She stayed that way until Cold Oak, when she evaporated into so much dust under Asenath’s muzzle.

Dean’s never heard Asenath howl the way she did that night. Not when the hell hounds tore at them a year later, or when Sam and Bridget fell into the cage years after that. She was stoically silent as Lisa’s daemon—a fox named Matthew with dark, shrewd eyes—touched his nose to hers inquisitively. Even now that they have Sam back, she doesn’t more than whimper when she looks over, expecting Bridget to be there at her side in the mornings.

But that whimper speaks volumes. And maybe it’s reckless and selfish, but Dean just can’t bring himself to live with the feeling of being incomplete.

Death crams Sam’s soul back into his chest as promised, and Asenath is right at Sam’s side through all the screams and the begging. She stays when Dean has to get away, and she doesn’t waver, even when Dean’s sure that Sam is never going to wake up, that he’s lost what little he had of his brother because he wanted it all.

Then he wakes one morning to find Asenath curled up around a ragged, too-small bundle of dark, dark fur. Bridget’s missing a paw and overall looks like she’s been set on fire and nearly drowned, but she looks up at him with bleary eyes as he kneels beside them. She makes a pleased little mew as he touches a finger gently to the bridge of her nose.

“Dean?”

Dean looks up, and there’s Sam—his Sam—brow furrowed in confusion, looking worse for wear as he glances between Dean and their tangled-up daemons. 

“Hey,” is all Dean manages to get past the lump in his throat. Sam smiles—lopsided and still confused, but so real—in response, pulling Dean up into one of those ‘end of the world’ kisses he’s missed so desperately.

Sam runs his fingers through Dean’s hair and grips at his arms like he almost can’t believe he’s really there, and Dean kisses him like he’ll never get the chance again.

They pull apart reluctantly when Bridget limps over to rub against Dean’s legs and Asenath butts her head into Sam’s hip with a plaintive whine. Sam hugs Asenath tight around the neck as she whispers secrets Dean will never know into his ear, and Dean picks up the small, fragile feline at his feet with as much care as he can manage.

“I missed you,” she says in a brittle voice that tells him the thin wall that’s shielding Sam from his memories isn’t shielding Bridget.

“Me too,” he whispers, running his fingers through her fur, and she purrs like that’s enough.

Her pulse still calls out _safe, want, need_ , and Dean can finally breathe again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from John Mayer’s “Back To You” ([YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-AG2tBS7f4o))


End file.
